06/17/2024
Yesterday evening, I received a panicked message from the owner of our local Cat Café: A newly-adopted young female cat had managed to escape from the carrier her new family had brought to bring her home. Between the Café’s door and their car, she unzipped the carrier, jumped out in the parking lot and dashed down some stairs and around a corner to the side of the building where they lost sight of her.
This cat had never been outdoors in this area before, and possibly had never been an outdoor kitty in her life. She was unfamiliar with all the sights and sounds of an urban strip-mall/parking lot/apartment complex area. She didn’t yet know/trust the new people who had adopted her and her sister, beyond a couple of hours of interactions before adoption.
There were a few positives in this new-pet-owner nightmare: 1) “Dahlia” had been fostered and adopted out with her littermate sister, “Zinnia,” who did NOT escape at the same time, 2) the Café-owners knew someone (me) to reach out to immediately to begin rescue efforts, and 3) the escapee ran AWAY from traffic and into a relatively quiet area bordering an apartment complex.
I told them to stop running around calling her and to get ahold of some sardines in oil. I grabbed a couple of traps (I was down to my last two, so it was lucky I’d kept a couple aside for emergencies), then headed out to the next town over to help.
When I arrived, the panicked new owners were sitting out front of the Café with a used litter box, a big soft sided carrier, a dish of food, and sister Zinnia in a hard-sided carrier, and a couple of people were combing the shrubs surrounding the parking area. Before I headed out there, I had told the Café owner to advise everyone to go inside and stop all the activity there, but they had not listened to her because it does seem counterintuitive to NOT search for and call for a lost pet.
I introduced myself, showed them how the two different traps worked, and gave a mini-lesson on cat trapping:
Put traps in secure-feeling spots close to the entrance she just left and the last place she was seen. Place traps lengthwise up against walls. Put unwashed blankets the two sisters had slept on over the backs of the traps. Line the traps with pieces of cardboard or folded newspaper. Place sardines in oil as bait. Use sister as “bait” as well, in a fully covered carrier butted up to the back end of a trap. Monitor the traps the whole time from inside vehicles, and DO NOT get out, call, roll down windows, or attempt to coax the little escapee if she comes snooping around the traps.
I let them know they should set the traps just before dusk when things started to quiet down in the area, but that she was likely not to come around until the wee hours of the morning, and they had to have patience. I told them to get that litter box back inside because territorial outdoor cats in the area would come around looking for the intruder and could injure her or scare her further away. I told them that once trapped, she would likely bash around in the trap and maybe bang herself up a bit and they should be prepared to cover the trap right away to calm her down. And I told them to absolutely, positively NOT open the trap until she was inside their home and the doors were closed. Then I gave them my number and headed home.
At 2:30 the next morning, I received a text: Dahlia was trapped and on her way to her new home! The new owners had followed instructions perfectly, and the sister calling out from behind the trap finally did the trick. They told me they had spotted her at least two hours earlier checking things out, and if they had not been told specifically to remain invisible and LET THE TRAP DO THE WORK, they would have jumped out and tried to coax her to them, likely pushing her back into hiding or even chasing her out of the area.
A couple of “morals” to this story. If an indoor cat escapes from home or any cat gets out of a carrier during transport into an unfamiliar area:
· Get a trap AS SOON as possible, before dogs, predators, passers-by, territorial cats, or loud noises of traffic may scare the cat further from where they got out.
· Do not count on your cat coming to you: The second they got into an unfamiliar situation, their survival instincts kicked in and everything that moves became a predator to them – including you.
· Set more than one trap if it is possible to monitor more than one.
· Always monitor the traps (especially in urban areas), but do so from inside buildings or vehicles so you cannot be seen, heard, or smelled.
· Use familiar scents like the cat’s bed, owner dirty clothes, or littermates/mother cats/kittens to draw the cat to the trap (as well as very smelly food bait).
· DO NOT call out to the cat when you see it, LET THE TRAP DO THE WORK.
· Lastly, BE PATIENT, and continue to listen to the trapper. These folks were lucky, and Dahlia had not gone far, returned to where she got out, and was trapped right away, but if that had not been the case they would have needed to keep the faith and continue setting and monitoring the traps for perhaps many nights, possibly moving them to new spots if there were any definite sightings reported further away.
Remember, if you have an experienced trapper helping you, they understand cat behaviors and logic, which can be very different from what you expect. Cats are not dogs and cats are not people. A scared , stressed cat will act very differently from a cat comfortable in its familiar surroundings. Your cat’s best chances lie in listening to the trapper, believing in their knowledge, and following their instructions even when they seem odd to you.
